This is What it Looks Like When You Build for Yourself
On today’s morning walk, somewhere closer to my house than the lake, it clicked.
I’ve spent years telling founders the same thing: your perspective is valuable. The experiences that built you, especially the hard ones, those are your edge. Don’t qualify them. Don’t apologize for them. Own them.
But I never once took my own advice.
I don’t know exactly when I started doing it. “Ok, this is just a thought from me, Kelly Landrieu.” Qualifying my own opinion before I’d even finished offering it. As if my perspective needed to be introduced before it could be trusted. As if the thought needed a permission slip.
For years I’ve been in the room as someone else’s representative: speaking on behalf of a brand, a retailer, a program. It’s work I’m immensely proud of, but somewhere along the way I realized I’d never once asked what I bring to the table.
Come to find out: plenty.
View from my morning walk
A wise mentor once told me: when in doubt, take a walk.
So I decided to build my own table.
April 2026 was a difficult month. You don’t need the details, but blow after blow kept coming and no part of my life was left untouched, not in any of the ways that matter. There was no way out, but through.
Part of that throughway was stark assessment of my life: goals, contributions, lifestyle. What do I keep? What do I let go? What do I want more of?
The “more of” question is where EpicAppetite was born: a want for more community, more connection, more knowledge sharing, and a recognition that my seat has me touching many worlds: retailers and merchants, industry partners and community, and founders.
This is me, Kelly Landrieu, without qualification and with thoughts I want to share, conversations I want to start, and a perspective I’m done hedging before I offer it. Not the retailer spokesperson. The whole person. Because I love this industry and the people in it. Because I’m curious about it in a way that doesn’t turn off. Because I think the conversation is better when more people who actually know things are willing to say them out loud.
EpicAppetite is what it looks like when I finally take my own advice.
It’s a place for what I see, what I think, and what I can’t stop writing about. Trend Watch. Retail intelligence. The honest side of building. Points of view I’d rather say here than keep quietly to myself in a meeting room.
Pull up a chair.